By IANS
New Delhi : India’s geographic location puts it at the centre-stage of today’s geo-strategic and geo-economic scenarios because of which revitalising the country’s shipbuilding industry is no longer an option but a strategic imperative, a top military commander said Wednesday.
“Our geographic location, particularly in the maritime context, puts us at centre-stage of today’s geo-strategic and geo-economic scenarios, dominated by needs of energy security and terrorism concerns,” the Indian Navy chief, Admiral Sureesh Mehta, said.
“India’s emergence as a global power has thus moved from the realm of ‘if’ and ‘maybe’ to the question of ‘when’,” he added, while delivering the keynote address at the two-day seminar on “Shipbuilding in India: Challenges and Strategies” that opened here Wednesday.
According to Mehta, India’s aspirations and “quest for global prominence” were “inextricably linked with the oceans and will remain dependent on our ability and will to use them to maximum advantage.
“India’s rise as an economic power must necessarily coincide with her resurgence as a maritime power,” he said, adding: “Lessons from history have proved the obvious linkage between global power and maritime power.”
Thus, India’s national objectives lay in ensuring a secure and stable environment that which permits its economic development and the social uplift of its masses, the navy chief maintained.
“Within this overall objective, our prime maritime interest is to ensure national security and provide insulation from external interference, so that economic growth and developmental activities can take place in a secure environment,” he added.
This made revitalising India’s shipbuilding industry a strategic imperative, Mehta contended.
“For those who have adequate understanding of national security issues, the significance of shipbuilding in the furtherance of maritime security and the economic wellbeing of the nation should be clearly apparent,” he added.
Defence Minister A.K. Antony too referred to this aspect in his message to the seminar.
Noting that no nation could “attain the status of a great power” without a strong and vibrant shipbuilding industry, he said that until India became “vibrant and self-sufficient in every sense of the term, we will not be able to adequately look after our long-term maritime interests.
“Our endeavour must be to find viable solutions to the multifarious problems facing the shipbuilding industry,” Antony added.
Mehta also touched on the aspect of warship building, saying that with India’s expanding maritime responsibilities and interests, “we would need to maintain our force levels and increase numbers to a degree.”
“This would require our shipyards to deliver ships at the rate that the Navy and Coast Guard need them to realise their replacement and expansion plans,” he added.
Lamenting that the state-owned shipyards had not kept pace with the expansion plans of the Navy and the Coast Guard, Mehta said that despite their order books being full, “we are unable to meet the demands of warship replacements.”
“Unless spare warship construction capacity is created, the demand-supply gap will continue to expand. While capacity expansion in the commercial sector will have positive spin-offs for warship construction, dedicated capacity expansion for warship construction is inescapable,” the navy chief added.